love me tender, love me right
by Sky Samuelle
Summary: His life always makes the most sense when he and Juliet are enveloped in each other, body and mind, heart and soul. In the Dharma era, a sexy interlude between James, Juliet and their kitchen table.


**Title: Love me tender, Love me right**

**Author: Sky Samuelle**

**Fandom: LOST**

**Ship: James/Juliet**

**Rating: Mature**

**Summary:** His life always makes the most sense when he and Juliet are enveloped in each other, body and mind, heart and soul. In the Dharma era, a sexy interlude between James, Juliet and their kitchen table.

---

It's just one of _those _evenings.

He should be reading – or re-reading, because last night Juliet somehow convinced him that some passages of Wuthering Heights deserved a more thorough examination – but he can't focus on the page.

Tonight he really is not in the mood to appreciate the morose, tempestuous dynamic of Heathcliff and Catherine: Juliet is singing along under her breath to the low-volume radio, while she is doing the dishes. It's her turn and he just finished his bit of 'homework', but suddenly he can't concentrate on anything but her.

There's something beautiful and fragile in the simplicity of this moment, of the life they came to share almost accidentally, and right now James is acutely, achingly aware that this is something he has never had before.

His gaze roves over the outline of her shoulders, the curve of her hips, the endearing quality of her blonde hair pinned up, exposing the nape of her neck.

He remembers how it feels, to press his lips on the sensitive skin there, and he knows that soft sigh she would exhale if he dared to –

At once, he misses the feel of her skin under his mouth, the salty taste of her arousal on his tongue.

James Ford is not a man of moderate appetites and he may not be able to pinpoint when he started to do so, but he loves this blonde creature in front of him, so beautiful inside and out.

She is the goddamn highlight of his day, of his year even, and he loves that their time together is filled with endless conversations, the way she has invaded his nights – his entire life, really- on her tiptoes, as she feared her company could be a bother.

He remembers those first nights, when they were still shaking up with Miles and Jin and Daniel: a quiet porch, the glass of wine in her hand, the bottle of beer in his, or the book in either of their laps, talking about nothing and everything.

Sawyer always was a smooth-talker, but he spoke nothing but lies the most of time, while James was just stretching, having been quiet so long that he had forgotten himself, or perhaps Juliet was just _that _good of a listener and it felt like a shame to waste it.

They are engraved in his memory, that expectant tilt to her head that signals she is guessing there's something unsaid to the story he is saying, the musical smoothness to her voice when she shreds some of her mystery to reveal splinters of her life before him.

That was the thing about Jules; she wasn't just willing to lend an receptive ear, wasn't just disturbingly good at rousing the dragons sleeping in his mind… she was ready to return his honesty with hers, and because of that reciprocity, he could never begrudge her the fact he could not refrain from spilling his guts to her.

No, James couldn't begrudge her, but nor could he quit the wondering. It became harder and harder, every time he released every fucking thought his brain ever gave birth to, and she remained so incredibly unfazed. Every time she talked about her past and he picked on her regret for Rachel and Goodwin, her loathing for Ben, Edmund, and herself, he wondered more and more how it would feel to get under her skin… to see her finally losing her cool, shattering her composure for barely a moment.

Not to dominate her, but only to _see_ her, to have her in the same spot he sometimes sensed she had him.

To know what it was to release all of himself inside her physically –sweat and seed, blood and flesh- rather than releasing his mind inside hers.

Nowadays, James doesn't need to wonder anymore.

There are still evenings and word-filled nights, but there are also special hours he and Juliet prefer to leave most things unsaid.

He rarely does talk dirty to her- he used to do it often enough with his targets (and with Kate, to rile her up), but with Juliet it just feels wrong, like it would be beneath her- but it always feels like his moments of intimacy with her are beyond verbs and nouns, anyways, like a revelation that can't bear to be tainted by common definitions.

So he closes his book and comes up to stand behind her, pausing a little to savor the anticipation. Then he gets his hands on her shoulders, and as her muscles relax under his fingers, he kisses her earlobe and brushes his nose along her exposed nape.

Juliet leans into him, stills her dishwashing but says nothing, waiting, letting his arms surround her waist and draw her closer to him and away from the sink.

"James," she sighs, and it's more a promise of surrender than a reproach.

He doesn't understand why it's such a turn-on, but that sigh's soft and deep and _Juliet's_ and he wants her _now_.

"No good at waiting, here, Blondie, " he justifies.

"I see," she teases, and he can feel the smile in her voice even if he can't see it. It sends a shudder of longing through his spine, because it never gets old, the rightness of being with her. It was unexpected but it feels natural, like gravity and other unshakable laws of nature: his life always makes the most sense when he and Juliet are enveloped in each other, body and mind, heart and soul.

"We don't take enough advantage of our new status." He cajoles again, referring to the fact that they have a goddamn _house_ all to themselves now, like the clingy schoolboy with a crush whom he should be embarrassed to feel like so often around her.

But then she turns around, her hands still wet as they come to brush his cheeks and tangle in his hair, and she murmurs "Perhaps " on his lips before she kisses him.

Sawyer would definitely resent Juliet for reducing him to this needy mess, but James is nicely satisfied. He worries, sometimes, because if she weren't a time-traveling mechanic, this place would be just her cup of tea. Brain-maniacs all around, and she might do so much better than an emotionally stunted guy with split-personality dragging issues.

Yet Juliet, in all her mystifying cleverness, doesn't want better. She wants _him_, and he can feel it so very clearly as her tongue explores his mouth and his over-eager hands roam her back, underneath her shirt, and mould her against his chest.

He nuzzles her neck breathlessly while she tucks his shirt out of his pants, lingers over her throat with openmouthed kisses while she lazily caresses his bared stomach.

He tries dragging her away, toward the bedroom, but she pulls him back, tugging at the collar of his shirt.

"Jules?" He groans, frustrated, insistently caressing her body under her clothes up to the underside of her breasts, hoping she will get the hint he is not much in the mood for slow foreplay.

She might be about to answer, but he cuts her off with the most eloquent kiss he is able to give. She answers accordantly as he presses her more tightly against him, effectively entrapping her between his body and the kitchen counter, by tugging almost viciously at his hair.

It feels sort of good, definitely too good to distract him from his pursuit of her nudity and his hands keep straying…

"James," she tries again, more sternly, her nails digging into the small of his back.

"Hm?"

"Get me on that table. Now."

He won't even try to contain the grin that he can feel basically splitting his face in two. "Yah, mein fuhrer"

They barely shrug off their pants before he's on her again, and Juliet's legs are promptly wrapping around his waist, her mouth seeking his hungrily as his unbuttoned shirt is pulled violently off his broad shoulders.

She nibbles on the joint between his neck and collarbone and he feels both Sawyer's urge to consume her skin with his touch and James' lust to disappear between her thighs. It's like he might be about to split into two different personas, who both happen to think there's nothing hotter than Juliet, finally naked and sprawled for him on the kitchen table, her blonde hair spilled out of her bun to spread around her head like a gleaming halo.

He watches her features slacken, something akin to rapture twisting inside him as he drops his right arm between their bodies, pressing fingers against her sex. It's heady; the sensation of her drenched underwear underneath his fingertips, of her heat through the cloth, and it forces his eyes to drop closed for a fleeting moment.

The moment expires and he is once again seeing the miracle of her flushed cheeks and bright eyes and her parted lips. She's a magnificent sight when she gives herself over to the pleasure, and he would hate to miss a single second of it.

Juliet arches under him, challenging him with a flashing smirk and a forceful squeeze of her thighs, so James decides to play dirty, pushes her panties aside and lets his digits conquer her wettest, hottest recesses in languid strokes.

All the while she is climbing on him, twisting her fingers in his hair, reaching for his lips and kissing him like it is either the first or last time.

In the back of his mind, he vaguely wishes he could call back his consumed finesse in pleasing females, to worship her body like it deserves and feel every inch of her beneath his palms before they seal the deal, but he can say it's already too late. That's the kind of stuff they have reserved for the wee hours of the morning, when he can enjoy waking by her and awakening her senses one by one, and nights are apparently becoming a matter of fast and needful encounters.

Maybe he might come to love it, this new routine, because the idea alone of cultivating it undoes him, ripping away the last remnants of his patience.

He slides his cock inside her heavenly heat easily- Juliet is basically sitting on the table now, clinging onto him as much he is clinging onto her, rubbing his back in that way she knows drives him pleasantly insane-but his moans of appreciation are muffled because his face is hiding in the soft crook of her neck, allowing him to inhale her scent and taste her skin. He doesn't miss her welcoming whimpers and that's all that matters, anyway.

Juliet milks him demandingly, forcefully and he fucking _adores_ her for it, for squeezing him so tight between those gorgeous legs of hers even if she will refuse to get his name on her lips until the very last moment she can manage.

Digging inside Juliet is like looking for God: an all-consuming, nerve-fraying process that leads to the only peace he has ever known. When he feels her fluttering around him, biting his shoulder before crying out his name in half-sobbed relief, the rush of feeling grows exponentially and puts him asunder completely.

James never resists anyhow- it's incredibly sweet, being swept away from the aftershocks of her pleasure- even if it's strange, how for the first time in his life sex stopped being about power and began meaning something altogether different.

In the aftermath, when all the scattered fragments of lucidity begin to coalesce together in a more or less functional whole, he _always_ feels like saying something epic, inspired, like '_Kate was Sawyer's dream woman, but he is out of his league when it comes to you.' _because it becomes clearer with every passing second that this gorgeous woman in his arms is the ultimate realization of James' most hidden desires, James' very sanity, James' water and air and nourishment.

But what is he supposed to say, really? _' You are the world, my whole goddamn universe and everything else, everyone else disappears into you? I would give you anything, but I'm not sure what I've left to offer? '_ He would sound like a moron, mouthing off stuff like that, even if Juliet is the kind of amazing wonder that deserves to have hordes of guys throwing themselves at her feet and feeling this way about her and expressing it without looking permanently brain-damaged.

Honestly, he doesn't understand how it's possible, that all those other yahoos simply went blindly through life without seeing what he sees, without noticing that she is a walking miracle.

Maybe he just got lucky, for once.

He lets her know this by breathing ' Love you, Jules' on her hairline.

**END**


End file.
